Whistl Staff in Fulham Face Losing their Jobs

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As postal giant suspends door to door delivery service

The delivery unit was officially opened by Chelsea and Fulham MP Greg hands in September 2013 and since the Whistl - formerly TNT Post - posties have become a familiar site, cycling round local streets in their distinctive orange uniforms.

Now though, the company, which is owned by Dutch private postal group PostNL says it is reviewing the viability of its postal delivery service after LDC, a division of of Lloyds Banking Group, decided against investing in Whistl because of "ongoing changes in UK postal market dynamics and the complexity of the regulatory landscape".

Whistl will instead collect and sort mail from big name clients including Tesco, Barclays and Lloyds, which will then be delivered to people's doors by Royal Mail.

Around 2,000 people working for Whistl, in Liverpool and Manchester as well as west London, now face losing their jobs. The company says it will begin consultations with employees affected by the suspension of the end-to-end service, and with their union representatives.

However, many of the staff, some of whom came from long term unemployed backgrounds, will not be paid during this consultation period as they were on zero hours contracts. A letter sent to staff said that workers would be paid till the end of the week "as a gesture of goodwill".

Community, the recognised trade union at Whistl, says its members are "extremely worried for their futures". Les Bayliss, National Officer at Community said: " Community has a meeting of our senior reps tomorrow where we will begin to develop our response to the company's consultation. We will be doing all we can to identify a viable way forward for the business that safeguards our members' jobs.

" We should be clear that this is a suspension of the business not a termination of it, so we will be looking for the company to work with us to identify sustainable options to continue operations as soon as practically possible."

May 12, 2015